2of 2Tears run down the face of DACA recipeint Mi Jin Park of East Rutherford, New Jersey, as she recalls a childhood memory of when she and her brother were separated from their mother during the Journey to Justice press conference at Calvary Presbyterian Church on Monday, August 20, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

It’s not easy riding a bike for 1,300 miles with one eye on the road and the other on the lookout for immigration agents. But that’s exactly what a dozen young activists have been doing since they pedaled south out of Seattle.

“It’s scary,” said Young Woon Han, 30, one of the riders. “More scary than running over a thorn and getting a flat tire.”

On Monday, the Journey to Justice rolled into San Francisco to give riders’ necks — and other key portions of their anatomy — a day off. The five-week trek is designed to call attention to the plight of non-documented U.S. residents and demand a path to citizenship for all “Dreamers,” young immigrants living in the country illegally who were brought here as children. The name refers to never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act that would have provided protections for young immigrants.

Most of the cyclists have no permission to be in the U.S. after coming to the country on tourist visas and sticking around.

In the case of Allyson Duarte, now 25 years old, she waded across the Rio Grande in the middle of the night a dozen years ago.

“There were risks then,” she recalled. “And there are risks now.”

That’s why, on this little bike ride, a support van has more inside than the usual bananas and energy bars.

“Lawyers,” said Han. “We always have a lawyer with us at all times. We’ve had three different volunteer lawyers since we left Seattle.”

Becky Belcore, van driver, wears a Journey to Justice T-shirt during the press conference at Calvary Presbyterian Church held Monday, August 20, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif. T-shirts are being sold to help raise funs for the bike tour.

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Journey to Justice riders got the idea to cycle after their weeks-long vigil in front of the White House didn’t persuade the Trump administration and Congress to get permanent Dreamers legislation passed. And bicycling is better exercise than hunkering down on the sidewalk, the riders said.

Duarte, like every other immigrant, was looking for something better. She is a graduate student in philosophy at American University in Washington, D.C., and has DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status. She would be safe if stopped on the side of the road by immigration officers.

But eight of the other cyclists would not.

One of them is Alice, a 23-year-old organizer from Orange County who asked that her last name be withheld for fear of targeting by immigration agents.

“I have zero protection,” she said. “This bike ride is empowering, but it’s scary. We talk about what we’re supposed to do if we get stopped. Remain silent. Do not consent to being searched. And call the lawyer.”

Alice came to the U.S. years ago and never left. For the past three weeks she has lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and that has not been the hard part. Neither was falling off her bicycle no fewer than seven times since leaving Seattle.

“I prefer not to think about immigration agents,” she said. “Everything else is challenging enough.”

On Tuesday, the group — under the auspices of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium — pedals off to Davis, then south via Sacramento, Merced and Fresno to Los Angeles before arriving the first week of September, with any luck, in San Diego.

The highways around San Diego are dotted with immigration checkpoints, and avoiding agents in the final leg could be where the good fortune comes in.

Han has lost two bicycles to thieves since coming to the U.S., but he has never lost his liberty. He hopes to keep it that way, and to change a few minds and a few hearts en route.

“We’ve been getting so much support and positive feelings,” he said. “There have been a lot of hills and thorns, too.”

Chronicle staff writer Steve Rubenstein first joined The Chronicle reporting staff in 1976. He has been a metro reporter, a columnist, a reviewer and a feature writer. He left the staff in 2009 to teach elementary school and returned to the staff in 2015. He is married, has a son and a daughter and lives in San Francisco. He is a cyclist and a harmonica player, occasionally at the same time.